Far out into the sea stretches a reef of sharp rocks where many ships have found a terrible end: the steep, slippery slopes beyond the little Lion's Head isolate the coast from all assistance.
In front of us a dull green car was swinging round the curves. 'We'll pass her,' said Marinus, who was driving. The road is not wide—just room enough for two cars to pass abreast. The green car saw us coming, and decided we should not pass her. Marinus jerked his head forward, and vowed we should. For ten minutes I sat rigid; my eyes never left a small spot of mud on Marinus' coat. Between us and the mountain was the green motor; to our right was the sea. We dashed round corner after corner, a great juggernaut or machinery with not a spare yard of road. It was a glorious gamble, with almost a thousand to one that round the next corner we should meet something—a car or a cart. The cars ran silently.... Suddenly someone's nerve failed; we had passed the green car, and Marinus turned round to me and grinned. 'All right?' he said. My jaw seemed set in plaster of Paris, so I grinned too. The chauffeur was cursing softly and rapidly. Over the brow of the Hout Bay Nek was a big white car, full of people and wild flowers, coming towards us. I bent forward close to Marinus, so that the chauffeur should not hear. 'You brute!' I whispered; 'but it was simply great.' And Marinus winked.
We rushed down the hill, lined with pink protea, into the village of Hout Bay, or the Wood Bay, where the Company's yachts and sloops would come to carry away wood from the thick forests. No sign of forest now—only some low, wind-stunted trees along the beach. The Dutch fortified the bay, and the ruins of their fort still stand.
Chapman's Peak hides the curve of the coast and the Noord Hoek and Kommetje Valleys. Near the village is the old home of the Van Oudtshoorn family, whitewash and teak, high-stoeped, with stucco designs, and the date over the door. The Hout Bay Valley has a distinctive charm of its own; its river-bed is overgrown with palmiet, and its thatched farmhouses have Huguenot names: for in this valley grants of land were made to the Huguenot refugees, the road is hedged with little pink Huguenot roses growing over the ground which pastured the Hottentots' cattle. The farm, Orange Grove, lies low in an oak wood. We climbed the long Constantia Nek, and once more saw the widespread Isthmus, Constantia, Wynberg, and False Bay; little farms, little woods, the smoke from an engine—we had been round our world in a few hours.
CHAPMAN'S PEAK AND SLANG KOP POINT FROM HOUT BAY
CHAPTER X
FALSE BAY
The old road from Wynberg to Muizenberg is no longer traceable. I imagine it started from Waterloo Green, as all old Wynberg was centred round the hill. A convent stands back from the green, but, like the poem in the story of 'Through the Looking-Glass,' if you look again you will see it isn't a convent at all, but the old Wynberg homestead, one of the early grants of land to a freeman, the home of Mynheer Cloete.